


With the Aid of Gravity

by notwisely



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 23:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10174610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notwisely/pseuds/notwisely
Summary: Yuuri had plastered his childhood bedroom with posters of Viktor—had grown up with Viktor's irrepressible smile comforting him on the worst days, the promise of his silhouette against the endless blue of the sky behind him: that if Yuuri couldn't defy gravity and physics and mortality, Viktor would do it for him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> right so this started out as an otayuri superhero AU and it is. none of those things. viktor is vaguely superman and yuuri is absolutely not lois lane.
> 
> title from the wikipedia article for skydiving because i'm a child & easily entertained: _a method of transitioning from a high point to the earth with the aid of gravity_

Yuuri is exhausted, covered in dog hair, and starving. The shelter is always glad to have him come shoot but wrangling unruly animals is exhausting on a good day and soul-crushing on a day like this. He has maybe five useable shots out of two or three hundred—a perfect storm of bad lighting and feisty subjects and one of those days where nothing looks _right_ through the lens of his camera.

Just thinking about squeezing through the angry rush of pedestrians getting off work makes him want to lie down on the ground and never move again, so he ducks under the tangled yellow construction tape and takes the shortcut home. They're meant to be widening the streets, Yuuri thinks, or putting in a new metro line, or constructing a new train station. This street has been under construction for more than two years, he knows, the towering cranes and dusty scaffolding as much a part of the landscape as the fire hydrants and the scraggly, half dead trees the city plants and re-plants each year. 

The October wind slices through him, and Yuuri hunches into his jacket, trying to keep as much of his face covered as possible while shielding his bag of appallingly expensive photography equipment. He's thinking longingly of the noodle shop down the street from his apartment building when his phone pings. Yuuri fumbles it out to see a text from Phichit reading, _miss you :( :(_. A second later, a photo pops up: Minako, holding a sheaf of papers and screaming at a terrified looking intern. It's deeply, endearingly, familiar—he can hear Minako yelling _" – and I don't care how your biweekly undergraduate gossip rag ran its garbage fire of an office, this is a GODDAMN NEWSPAPER – "_ without even thinking about it, but a part of him aches at the snapshot– they've rearranged the desks, and he doesn't know the interns by name, and it's been so long since he's seen Minako or Phichit in person.

Yuuri is laughing a little through the pang in his chest, swiping at his screen with numb fingers so he can type out a response, when he hears an ear-splitting _CRACK_.

He doesn’t have time to look up, doesn’t have time to blink before there's a vise-like grip around his waist and he's airborne, moving inhumanly fast, the wind in his face sucking the air out of his lungs. Then, with a rush of nausea he finds himself on the roof of a nearby building, the perfect vantage point to watch the top half of the crane smash into the scaffolding, the graffitied cement of a half-finished building, and finally, the ground where he'd been standing half a second ago.

Yuuri can only gape at the destruction.

A voice behind him chirps, "That was a close one! You really are as observant as a brick wall, aren't you?" and Yuuri turns to see—more impossible than _any_ of the events in the last thirty seconds—Viktor, arms folded, cape fluttering behind him, head cocked curiously as he inspects Yuuri.

*

Yuuri had plastered his childhood bedroom with posters of Viktor—had grown up with Viktor's irrepressible smile comforting him on the worst days, the promise of his silhouette against the endless blue of the sky behind him: that if _Yuuri_ couldn't defy gravity and physics and mortality, Viktor would do it for him.

He had hoarded comic books and articles, carefully cutting them out of his parents' discarded newspapers in order to press between the pages of his schoolbooks. There is a terrible, never-to-be-unearthed, photograph of thirteen-year-old Yuuri Katsuki, all awkward limbs and shy smile, proudly wearing a poorly-hemmed purple-red cape with his hair sprayed silver. He had first seen Viktor _move_ on a grainy tiny living-room television, Yuuri sitting squashed between Mari and Vicchan listening to news anchors as awed and excited as they were.

"He's lifting the bridge!" one gasped, "Viktor is _lifting_ the bridge—no, the cars are still sliding forward—but he's _got_ them, he's stabilized the cables—" 

And Yuuri had watched Viktor, a red-and-silver blur weaving between cables and rubble to lift a dark-blue Toyota back onto the bridge, then, slowly, slowly, drag the suspension cables back up to the tower. He had moved with a deliberate grace, more like a choreographed dance than a rescue mission, Yuuri thought, and a little piece of him had fallen in love.

*

So he recognizes Viktor.

Yuuri _doesn't_ faint, which is about the best that can be said of the situation.

He stands in baffled silence as Viktor insults his situational awareness, marvels at his continued survival, and scoffs at the tailoring on Yuuri's coat. There aren't coherent thoughts running through his mind, just an overwhelming wave of white noise. He stares blankly when Viktor asks him where he lives, and if he can get back. Viktor takes Yuuri's face in his hands, shockingly gentle, and says, "It's all right now. You're not in danger."

When Yuuri looks up again, he realizes he must have stammered out his address somehow, because he is at the entrance of his apartment building. Viktor takes a step back, then pauses, inhaling as if he's about to say something. Someone in the distance screams " _Is that Viktor?_ " and the moment is gone, Viktor smiling at Yuuri one last time before streaking up into the sky.

"Th-thank you?" Yuuri manages, nearly two minutes after Viktor has vanished.

*

The panic sets in as he's showering off the rubble dust and Yuuri finds himself curled up with his back against the tile, crying hysterically into his knees. When he closes his eyes he sees, over and over, the metal arm of the crane smashing into the pavement, chunks of asphalt flying into the air.

And _Viktor_ saved him. Viktor _saved him_. It makes Yuuri cry harder and he doesn't understand why—that Viktor was real after all, the undeniable warmth of Viktor's arm wrapped around Yuuri's waist, solid in a way that Yuuri's childhood fantasies had never been.

When he finally climbs out of the shower, Yuuri's completely exhausted, barely managing to burrow into a mound of blankets before passing out.

*

When Yuuri stumbles into his kitchen the next morning, he's still only managed to string together a handful of thoughts about last night: _what the fuck_ , and _I almost died_ , and _that was VIKTOR_ , and _what the FUCK_. He's pulling a mug off the shelf when someone says, "Good morning!" and Yuuri instinctively flings his shitty ceramic WORST INTERN mug at the sound.

The worst part, Yuuri reflects, as he's gasping out apologies and trying to sweep the shards into a pile with his bare hands, is that he'd missed by nearly _two feet_.

(The worst part, he admits to himself later, looking at the jagged black and white chunks in his trash bin, is that the mug had been a gift from Phichit.)

Viktor brushes Yuuri's hands aside to scoop up the sharp pieces and frowns at Yuuri. "Are you always this jumpy?"

" _Why are you_ _here_?" Yuuri says.

"Ah well! You were terrible at taking care of yourself yesterday, so I decided to check in!" Viktor smiles sunnily. "I read the address off your license while I was taking you home. Are you a photographer?" He asks, which is when Yuuri notices the DSLR he'd dumped on the kitchen table in yesterday's post-adrenaline haze, its LCD display lit up from where Viktor has clearly been flipping through the photos from yesterday's shoot.

It's been five months since _anyone_ has seen Yuuri's photography. He's been selling images, of course, to Getty and Shutterstock and Dreamstime, but buried in the masses of stock photography available online it's near-anonymous. He sends out batch after batch of puppies and skylines and macro insect shots, and gets back his cut of the licensing fees from unknown, faceless customers.

He feels a roar of panic, the urge to yell "Stop, stop, don't look" though of course, it's already too late for that. If anonymity is safe, if the distance between Yuuri and wherever his photographs end up is a buffer, insulating him from having to think about their existence, then this feels like being stripped naked, humiliating and awful.

"These are not good." Viktor says.

"I'm not a very good photographer." Yuuri mutters, low.

"Mm." Viktor makes an indecipherable noise. He frowns at the table, where, Yuuri realizes with a jolt of horror, there are two picture frames laying where Viktor has dropped them. One is a family photo, Mari making obnoxious bunny ears over Yuuri's head while he clutches at a longsuffering Vicchan, his mother and father standing proudly on either side. The second, which Viktor has somehow excavated from its hiding place between two books, is the sole shot he'd kept from last summer. It's angled from below the same bridge he'd watched Viktor lift, a solitary diving bird against the vast sky, falling towards the ocean below.

*

Six months ago, Yuuri had been living in National City, shooting basketball games and concerts and parades freelance for the National City Herald while dragging his black, leather-bound portfolio through a carousel of coffee shops and libraries and community centers, an endless nauseating parade made worse by the clinging summer heat. Each time a would-be client opened the book, it felt like they were prying apart his ribs— _here I am, all the separate jagged pieces of myself, all the tender and hidden places I have loved_ —and the crush of polite rejections, layer upon layer of _thanks, but no thanks,_ had been suffocating. 

But between the grim slogging misery of work, he'd achieved first-name honors with Auntie Li at the steamed bun shop, been dragged, against his will, to a karaoke night that would _never_ be spoken of with Chris and spent hours laughing with Phichit while Minako bullied their summer interns into producing mildly-acceptable copy.

It had been an unstable equilibrium, Yuuri knew, a tiny nudge all that would be required to send him tumbling from the high-wire balancing act he was barely maintaining.

Six months ago, Yuuri had gotten an invitation to participate in the International Institute of Photography's young talent exhibition.

Yuuri doesn't remember much of the month leading up to the exhibition. It's a blur of panic, of waking up at four in the morning to rearrange shots, of constantly tweaking and tweaking images until his vision blurred or he passed out on top of his still-whirring laptop. He has hazy images of Phichit stopping by with food, of brushing aside his concern. There wasn't any _time_ to be concerned. It had been like running underwater, each new photograph sluggish and clumsy, each arrangement discordant, no matter what he did or tried. At the end of it, after he'd sent out the final images, he'd curled up on his bed and cried—deep, ugly sobs because he'd gotten his chance and– well, it turned out that Yuuri Katsuki just didn't have what it took.

Opening weekend reviews trickled in and he had known without looking, but of course he had looked anyway. _Shockingly incoherent_ , said one critic, _an astonishing departure for newcomer Katsuki_. Another began _We've come to expect more editorial fare from the IIP Gallery, whose reputation is built on groundbreaking, revolutionary exhibitions._ _It's clear that Katsuki has potential_ , the Eagle's review conceded, _but perhaps he was simply not prepared for a professional showing at this level_.

Five months ago, Yuuri had moved across the bay to Metropolis.

*

He's been trying to put the shattered pieces of himself back together since. Barring that, he's going to pretend that he's never had any ambitions or desires and is perfectly content to die in mediocre anonymity until it becomes true through sheer force of will.

Selling stock photography and doing the occasional calendar shoot covers most of his bases, but he works odd shifts at Yuu-chan's roller rink, entertaining the triplets when she's busy with other work. He calls his family on weekends and sometimes manages to get past _I wish I were home_ before dissolving into tears. It's not glamorous—it's not anything he imagined or wanted—but it doesn't _hurt_.

*

Viktor leaves, finally, after Yuuri frantically reclaims the photographs and stammers a number of increasingly incoherent things about the bridge and the rescue and, appallingly, Viktor's eyes. After the door shuts behind him, Yuuri takes a moment to clutch at his hair and hiss " _Oh my god._ " at the empty living room.

It's been an exhausting and bewildering twenty-four hours, and he will have to tell Phichit eventually, Yuuri knows, or risk being disowned, but for now Yuuri tucks the memory away behind his breastbone, a glittering, impossible thing that belongs only to him. It takes a moment for him to realize that he's breathtakingly happy—to have met Viktor, to be alive still, to have discovered that Viktor, in person, is kind of a dick.

Once in a lifetime, Yuuri thinks, and he's still smiling a little to himself as he walks out of Skate Castle after his shift the next day, to find Viktor lounging casually against the brick wall, wearing a blazer and scarf rather than the cape-and-spandex. "Yuuri!" he cries, straightening.

"What." says Yuuri.

"Oh my god, is that _Viktor_?" says Yuu-chan, poking her head out of the door.

"Hello!" chirps Viktor. "Who are you? What is this place?"

"Ah, it's a roller rink?" Yuuri says, blankly. "Yuu-ch- uh- Yuuko owns it."

"A _roller rink_." Viktor breathes, like it's the most fascinating thing he's ever heard.

"Come in! We're closed, but you can skate with Yuuri!" says Yuu-chan, taking advantage of Yuuri's momentary speechlessness because she's terrible and will never forget that, of the two of them, Yuuri had been the one to burst into tears during the gratuitously awful _Viktor Rising_ film they had watched, in theaters, on opening night.

The triplets have a synchronized mental breakdown as Viktor is fluttering between two nearly-identical pairs of skates, and Yuuri sympathizes deeply. Instead of being allowed to have his own, more private breakdown, Yuu-chan harasses him into a pair of his own skates then shoves him onto the rink after Viktor.

Yuuri forgets to be anxious in a heartbeat though, because it turns out Viktor is a _disaster_ on wheels. For someone whose every movement looks deliberate, who makes walking look purposefully elegant, on skates Viktor manages to flail and upend himself in ways that don't look physically possible. Endearingly, Viktor is tremendously sulky about this development, as if effortless skill at all things is simply his birthright. After the third tumble, Yuuri, who grew up in Skate Castle and can walk as well on roller skates as he can on solid ground, takes Viktor's hands to guide him in slow circles around the rink.

As Yuuri is skating backwards to steady Viktor if he stumbles, he glances up. Viktor is looking at him, pensive frown melting into something softer, warmer, as he catches Yuuri's eyes. Yuuri can only stare, caught, as an answering smile bubbles up from somewhere inside him.

He takes a breath, readying himself to say– something, he's not sure what, when, Skate Castle's speakers crackle alive and blare out " _you're dying to try, you wanna kiss the girl_ ". Yuuri flails backwards, taking Viktor down with him in an ungainly heap on the waxed floor. He glowers over at the sound station where Nishigori is giving him two thumbs up with an enthusiasm that borders on obscene.

*

When Yuuri steps out of his apartment the next Monday, Viktor is hovering by the front steps in a sharply-tailored trench coat. "Food trucks!" he cries. "Yuu-chan showed me one that serves _everything_ on a stick!" Of course she did—Yuuri's going to bring the triplets a bag of candy _each_ the next time he's at the rink, he thinks vindictively. Viktor wraps a hand around Yuuri's wrist, the tentative warmth belying the assurance in his voice.

"There's one that sells burgers but with donuts as buns." says Yuuri, because he's weak, and Viktor lights up.

He finds himself playing tour guide in a city that Viktor has lived in for least a half-dozen more years than Yuuri has. They go to see the bronze duck statue in the Shen Li Po Gardens, worn shiny-smooth from thousands of hands, and Viktor ropes Yuuri into each of his selfies, then insists on running his fingers over the beak for good luck.

Later, when they're holed up in Yuuri's apartment with greasy takeout from Chinatown, Viktor says, "I've never been a tourist before," soft and confessional. "It feels like I've only ever seen the city from above."

"I only moved here half a year ago," Yuuri says, feeling clumsy and thick-tongued, "we can see it together."

It's been nearly a week, though, and Viktor doesn't seem to understand that Yuuri still needs to work. He pouts outrageously when Yuuri says he's headed to Outlook Park to take some shots of autumn trees and picturesque bridges and tacky swan boats instead of having lunch with Viktor.

As he's lining up his first picture he hears, "Yuuri!" and turns to find Viktor, fully decked out, cape billowing in the wind. Someone screams " _It's Viktor!_ " and Yuuri swears he feels the ground rumble as heads turn towards the sound. He winces a little as Viktor vanishes behind a wall of bodies.

Half an hour later, Yuuri is squinting at the lake, wishing he had a more photogenic selection of ducks and hating himself a little for it when Viktor flies overhead, holding what appears to be an armful of actual kittens.  " _Yuuri_ ," Viktor calls. Yuuri suppresses the urge to look over his shoulder and smiles instead. He pauses for a moment longer, so Yuuri waves. Viktor takes off, shaking his head a little.

By the time the light has faded Yuuri feels like he has a reasonable selection of photographs to show for a day's work. As he's headed home, he hears "Yuuri!" from above, and looks up to see Viktor, standing on top of a skyscraper framed by the last dying rays of sunset. 

Viktor is, objectively, ridiculous. It's hard to reconcile the superhuman force of nature with the Viktor who says Yuuri's wardrobe causes him physical pain and is unsettlingly enthusiastic about disgusting food but Yuuri can admit to himself that he wants all of it. He doesn't understand why Viktor is still here, why he's choosing Yuuri, again and again, but Yuuri's decided, somewhere along the line, that he will take this, for as long as he can have it.

"Do you want to have dinner?" Yuuri calls up, before he can think better of it.

Viktor leaps off the building, landing next to Yuuri with an effortless grace. There's something a little rueful in his smile, but he says, "Oh Yuuri. I always want to have dinner with you." and Yuuri feels utterly weightless, for a moment.

*

Yuuri texts _coffee?_ to Phichit then has to sit on his hands to stop himself from refreshing the messenger app over and over. He only has a few minutes to work himself up before the phone pings and Yuuri is left staring at it, heart pounding. He's bailed out of every one of Phichit's attempts to meet up in the last five months with paper-thin excuses, Phichit doesn't owe him anything, Yuuri knows. He can't help hoping anyway.

The uncomplicated delight in Phichit's _yes!!!!_ ☕☕☕❤️️❤️️ makes his stomach twist with guilt, but mostly Yuuri is overwhelmingly, breathtakingly relieved.

They meet up at their favorite café in National City, and when Yuuri steps inside Phichit hops up from where he's claimed two giant, pillow-laden wicker chairs by the window while yelling "Yuuri!" and waving both arms frantically. "I almost forgot what you looked like, you asshole." Phichit says, laughing, and Yuuri searches his words for any sign of resentment but comes up empty.

"Sorry," he says anyway, just to be safe.

"I missed you." Phichit replies, wrapping Yuuri in a fierce hug. "Okay now sit down, I have to tell you what the intern did the other day." and Yuuri sits, laughing, holding close the feeling that he's come home.

Phichit is halfway through a story involving ice cream, a hair straightener, and Yuuri guesses, copious amounts of blood loss when he freezes, clutches at Yuuri's arm, and hisses " _Viktor!_ "

Yuuri whips around to see Viktor lurking casually on the other end of the café, poorly pretending to read a newspaper. Viktor's in what his probably his idea of incognito—a neutral-toned silk shirt and sunglasses—and Yuuri can't help but roll his eyes. He realizes a second later that Phichit is watching him and flushes, his whole face going instantly hot. Phichit's expression shifts from amazed to _deeply, deeply_ suspicious.

"What did you do." He says, looking between Viktor, who wiggles his fingers in a half-wave like a _douchebag_ , and Yuuri.

"Nothing!" Yuuri moans through his hands. Phichit narrows his eyes and reaches over to pry Yuuri's arms away from his face. He raises an eyebrow and Yuuri folds like wet newspaper. "Okay, well," he stammers, and the whole story comes out: the rescue and the morning-after and the dinners and guided city tours—all of it.

Phichit is exactly as pissed as Yuuri anticipated, and there's a small part of him that's almost glad—that he still knows Phichit after all. "You almost _died_ and you didn't _tell me_? And what does _he_ want?" he snaps, clearly torn between his immediate need to yell at Yuuri and his equally compelling immediate need to glare Viktor to death. He finally settles for shifting his chair so that he is cruelly blocking Viktor's view of Yuuri and leans in.

"Yuuri," he says, suddenly earnest, "are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Yuuri sighs, "No, not at all. But–" he tries to inch sideways to look over at Viktor and Phichit puts both hands on Yuuri's shoulders. "No, I don't know." Yuuri admits.

Phichit sits back, clearly dissatisfied. A moment later he straightens again and yells "And! He broke my mug!"

"Oh no, I was the one–" Yuuri starts.

"He _broke_ my _mug_!" Phichit turns to shoot an absolutely venomous glower at Viktor, who looks appropriately taken aback.

Yuuri finally manages to wrangle the conversation off of Viktor by bringing out the photos he'd taken from the animal shelter. Later, as they're paying, Phichit suddenly smirks. "Minako is going to _love_ this," he says, and Yuuri is paralyzed by the absolute certainty of his imminent bloody death. 

*

Yuuri takes his favorite camera with him everywhere. It's not the most professional or expensive machine he owns, just an old SLR because while digital work is vastly more convenient, in his heart of hearts Yuuri still loves the feel and permanence of film best of all. And nearly a month after the rescue, Yuuri has boxes of photos of Viktor, none of which are useful or publishable in any way. In this month alone, Viktor has put out two fires, valiantly fought off a handful of would-be muggers, and rescued a dozen lost pets. Yuuri has photographed none of these things.

Instead he has dozens of shots of Viktor drinking coffee, Viktor reading terrible trashy romance novels, Viktor falling on his ass at the roller rink, Viktor delighted and sulky and bored.

Looking at the photos makes him flush with embarrassment—they are so gratingly obvious, he thinks. Each image is a soft blur of warmth and affection, as if the camera loves Viktor as much as Yuuri does.

He piles all the prints in a shoebox and hides them under his bed.

But he doesn't stop taking them.

His other work is changing as well. Yuuri looks over his shoots and knows that they are more daring, more risky; more sharp, dramatic angles, and fewer flat, photogenic landscapes. He takes a week to do a series of pedestrians from a bird's eye view, a different perspective of the people that make up this city, of which every shot is utterly unsuitable for stock photography. He uploads them to his website instead and, flipping through the image gallery, feels a sharp, unexpected burst of pride.

Viktor drags him back to the rink to show off (Yuu-chan has been keeping Yuuri updated about Viktor's secret roller-skate practices) and Yuuri takes photo after photo—of Viktor's truly remarkably improved skating, but also of the lights on the rink floor and the triplets playing in the practice area and the abandoned benches in the changing area—until Viktor gets petulant and pins him up against the railings with a kiss.

They've devolved into making out like teenagers on the wooden floor when Nishigori pops up over them and yells, " _No sitting on the rink!_ " and Yuuri jerks back so quickly he smacks his head against the metal bar. "Go sit on the carpet, we just waxed this thing." Nishigori says, smirking.

"I couldn't wait! Can you blame me?" Viktor replies smugly while Yuuri curls up and wishes for death.

*

He's thinking that maybe this will be enough, to have Viktor until Viktor chooses to leave, when he gets the email.

 _Hi Yuuri,_ It reads, _I'm Marian Franklin, director of photography for National Geographic Traveler. We found your portfolio online and are very interested in offering you a contract to shoot a series of photos in St. Petersburg. Please let me know if you are interested in this opportunity and I can provide further details!_

*

He's just put on the morning coffee, two mugs waiting on the counter as he flips through his email, and when he sees it he sits—or, his knees fold—heavily on the floor, staring blankly at his phone. His first reaction is simply the overwhelming, desperate thought that he _can't do this again_. He remembers, at the end of the IIP exhibition, feeling completely hollowed out—like there was nothing of what made him _Yuuri_ left to give.

And he's not brave, not like Viktor is. He never has been.

The phone rings, and Yuuri flinches. When he sees Minako's name on the screen the solid pit of dread in his stomach melts into a more familiar, more welcome sort of terror.

"YUURI KATSUKI," she screams as soon as he picks up, "YOU _FUCKING_ ASSHOLE." and he can't stop the grin spreading over his face. Minako viciously slanders his decision making skills, his lack of self-preservation instincts, his family line, his education – 

("That's you," interjects Yuuri.

"Did I _ask_?" Minako snarls.)

– and wraps it up with "Come by the office today, photo wants the shots Phichit says you have of the marathon and if you don't get me an exclusive with Viktor I will _personally_ fucking gut you."

It's not as if he has a choice, really. He grabs the memory stick with the photos and scrawls a note for Viktor by the coffeemaker.

The room has been rearranged, but the National City Herald office _feels_ the same. Phichit bounces up to greet him and snatches the memory stick with glee. Anya at the copy desk pauses her verbal evisceration of a new reporter to smile and wave, and, near the big windows, Minako is sitting at her desk with her arms folded.

"Roof." she says when Phichit mercilessly shoves Yuuri over to her, and when they get outside she immediately whips out a cigarette.

"Phichit's already told me the trainwreck of how you two met, fill me in on the rest." she says.

Yuuri finds himself babbling about the roller rink, of all things, about how Viktor can't skate and can't stand it, how he's a compulsive, compulsive cheater and honestly terrible at losing anything. He talks about taking photos of the rink, of the street portrait series, finds himself admitting that he still misses the paper, sometimes—misses having his photos _seen_ , having his work be more than the anonymous background of an airline company ad.

Finally, he says "I've taken a thousand photos of Viktor, probably," as close to a confession as he can stand, and tilts his head back to stare up at the sky.

"Well," Minako says, after a pause, "I'm glad you're happy." She loops an arm over his shoulders and squeezes gently. "Now let's go, it's freezing up here."

*

When he gets back to his apartment he finds Viktor sitting on the floor surrounded by photographs. Viktor looks up when Yuuri enters and then down again, and Yuuri follows his gaze to the opened shoebox, to photo after photo of Viktor, secret moments Yuuri had stolen for himself. "Yuuri," Viktor says, something raw and frantic in his voice, and then he pulls a newspaper clipping from his pocket—well-worn, carefully folded, with _Y. Katsuki_ as the photo credit.

*

It had been a front-page photo, Yuuri's five seconds of fame. Then the internet had blown it up, circulating the image so widely it had somehow snuck its way onto the shortlist for the Feature Photography Pulitzer—but of course he hadn't won and the buzz had faded after a few months.

He had been on assignment, shooting the convention center, newly completed after four years of construction, all swooping steel arcs and curved glassy windows. It was standard fare, something low-priority that a freelancer just starting out with the paper could take on.

Yuuri had been setting up, taking test shots to feel out the lighting, when Viktor blazed past.

There'd been time for just one shot—when it usually took a dozen for Yuuri to find even one workable image—of Viktor, suspended mid-air, tiny in front of his ten-story tall reflection in the curved glass behind him, with the rest of the city stretching out beyond him and the brilliant, clear blue of the sky beyond that.

The reflection is blurred a little, camera focused on Viktor as if it couldn't bear to look away.

*

Standing in his doorway with the pieces of his heart scattered around Viktor, Yuuri waits to feel—aghast, humiliated the way he knows he should be. Instead, looking into Viktor's eyes, he finds that he is deeply, fiercely glad. Yuuri is sure of so little, always, and it's astonishing to find that he's been sure of Viktor all along.

"Yuuri," Viktor says again, "you-"

And Yuuri ducks in to kiss him, shameless and open, thinking _this is mine. I get to keep this._

He doesn't have much faith in himself, Yuuri knows, but he has faith in Viktor—who believes, instinctively, unthinkingly in Yuuri. And he knows that if he should fall again, this time he won't be alone. 

 

* * *

 

**Epilogue**

"Ah, perfect!" Viktor says, loudly enough that Yuuri can tell he's angling for a response. Yuuri looks up from his laptop to see Viktor stepping away from the wall, where he has—oh god—hung a portrait of thirteen-year-old Yuuri, dressed up as Viktor.

"Where did you even _find_ that?" Yuuri says, appalled.

"These things turn up." Viktor waves a hand airily, meaning that he'd pouted at Yuuri's mother and she'd coughed up every photo album she could lay her hands on.

"I'm going to take that and hide it as soon as you're out of the room." Yuuri replies firmly.

"We'll replace it with your Pulitzer, when you win it." Viktor says. "You can think of this as... incentive!"

The photo is a decade old but Yuuri still remembers dressing up, of feeling strong and invincible with Viktor's cape wrapped around him. He looks at Viktor, standing in their living room in a loose t-shirt that reads CROP IT LIKE IT'S HOT, and feels invincible in an entirely different way.

Yuuri smiles, "Maybe we'll put them next to each other."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me on [tumblr](http://not-wisely.tumblr.com/) !


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry my dudes i wanted to put yuri & otabek in but including them would have made this thing probably half again as long and it's ALREADY twice as long as i intended, but i did come up with superhero names (tigris & champion) and powers (pyrokinesis & super strength+invulnerability) for both of these kids and here is a tiny scene

"I thought we agreed that you wouldn't set any more villains on fire." Champion says, staring.

"She's not on fire." Tigris replies smugly. It's an accurate statement, but only by the smallest margin. The terrified would-be bank robber has been dumped into a circle of wooden boxes, all of which are blazing merrily. Drenched in sweat, she inches closer to one side and the wall of fire shoots up, sending her skittering backwards.

"Not _yet._ " Champion mutters, rolling his eyes. Tigris looks, impossibly, even smugger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yuri's approach to fighting crime is roughly "set it on fire. is it already on fire? make it be more on fire"


End file.
